More disaster

There is no way I could resist a book with this blurb from the NY Times on the cover: "A classic disaster tale." The book is "The Worst Hard Time," by Timothy Egan, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction last year. The disaster in question is the Dust Bowl, which transformed the American prairie from fertile farmland into a living nightmare during the 1930s.

I had heard of the Dust Bowl, of course, but until I read this book I really didn't know quite what it was. I thought it was just a really bad drought. Well, it was much, much worse. Egan relates the long history leading up to the natural disaster:

The prairies of Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle were originally populated by tall grasses, bison and Native Americans. The land was perfect for growing grasses, but not much else. Then, after the U.S. government decided to remove both bison and Native Americans, settlers were encouraged to rip up the grass, build homesteads and plant wheat. This worked out pretty well for a few years, until wheat prices bottomed out during the Depression, and more and more grassland was dug up by farmers desperate to break even. Well, it turns out the soil is not so fertile once you take away the grass that is literally holding it in place. Wind storms, which had always been common in the prairie, started picking up the dirt and carrying it in massive storms that could blot out the sun for hours at a time.



For years, people who lived in the Dust Bowl endured these dust storms, several per month. Livestock died from swallowing so much dirt, and it wasn't very healthy for humans either. The worst of the storms traveled all the way to the East Coast, coating New York and Washington DC in prairie dirt.

Naturally many people decided to leave the plains, but it was hard to find another place where they would be welcome. Many others decided to stick it out, either because they loved the land too much or had no other place to go. Egan follows several families through their Dust Bowl experiences, which really makes the story come to life. I highly recommend this book—it illuminates a part of American history that most people probably don't know very much about.

I know I have not posted in a while, but I HAVE been reading :) I just finished a novel that I will blog about soon...